Making the connection: Closing in on what it takes to keep new grads in Nova Scotia

(Left to right) Sue Siri, Corey LeRue and Denise Watters are all NSCC graduates who found success here in the Halifax region. (Paul Darrow)

For many young Nova Scotians, the glorious moment of graduating from university or college is swiftly followed by a disheartening realization of how hard it’s going to be to turn that education into a job. Many go down the road to the rest of Canada, leaving an aging population with a shrinking workforce. Experts say smart interventions at this crucial moment can unlock a brighter future for the province.

“Many international students simply never learn about the best jobs,” says Wendy Luther. She’s the head of EduNova, the industry association for education and training providers. “In Atlantic Canada, a lot of our job opportunities come through your own personal networks. That’s how you even hear about jobs being available,” she says.

While locals might hear about them through friends and colleagues, or their extended family networks, international students get cut out. Luther knows whereof she speaks: when she arrived in Nova Scotia from B.C. 16 years ago, she relied heavily on her Bluenose husband’s networks to get started.

“What was top of mind for us was being able to create those networks for a group of students that might not have them organically through their own connections. So how can we create those connections for them?” she asks. The answer is a program called Stay in Nova Scotia, which connects 50 international students from 23 countries to local mentors who share their networks and advice. It’s funded by the Department of Labour and Advanced Education and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA).

EduNova runs the program with Venor, a Halifax-based career-services firm. Venor helps find mentors in the business community and beyond. Luther says the early results are encouraging. Shortly before speaking to Business Voice, she had a long conversation with an international student perplexed by a job offer. “After speaking with her for 45 minutes I realized she actually did not have a job offer in hand — she just didn’t realize it because she’s new,” she says.

Once that was cleared up, she helped the student create a strategy to move toward that job offer.

Luther tells of another mentee who felt she had blown an interview with a big financial services company. “It turns out their mentor knew the manager of this financial entity very well and was able to arrange a lunch with the three of them,” Luther says. “The student got another chance to put themselves forward.”

Locals rely on their connections in a close-knit community; EduNova says we all must stitch the outsiders in. Luther says Nova Scotia needs to grow its population, and with a low birth rate and high out-migration, keeping international students who want to stay is one way to head in the right direction.

“We see international students as a very important piece to fulfil our immigration goals and to attract young people to our region. If these graduates cannot find meaningful employment, they will not stay.”

Once students bridge the connections gap, through their own networks or borrowed ones, Sasha Sears of Fusion Halifax sees many trip over the “soft skills” of job hunting. Basically, they’re not great at working in the “real world,” and struggle with things like professional writing skills and working with a team. “Especially for students that don’t have work experience while studying — people who don’t do a co-op or internship.”

Fusion runs on local volunteers (including Sears) and part of their mandate is to connect young professionals to each other and to jobs. That’s her first piece of advice to graduates: get those missing skills for free. “We find that volunteering is a great way to build those skills, as well as a network in the community.”

Sears says employers can help out by letting go of the old idea that people need three to five years of work experience for “entry level” jobs. Few grads will take that “no” as encouragement and will either go to another company or leave the province altogether. Instead, she says managers should think about how long it would take to teach the missing skills and focus on the long-term benefits of getting a loyal employee.

“I think a lot of young people today really value employers that care about their employees,” she says. “If you’re an employer that’s not doing those things, I would say you’re missing out on some really great talent.”

“If you’re really looking for great talent, you want to be known as a great employer.”

Fusion runs a mentorship program, and although it’s not focused on connecting graduates to jobs, it does help people early in their careers learn from veterans. That helps young professionals see where their career could go, and what other jobs it could lead to. “We promote anything we can to help young people stay here, live here and work here,” Sears says.

She suggests joining Fusion, too. It’s free and offers great volunteer roles on its “action teams,” focused on urban development, sustainability, immigration, arts, culture, entrepreneurship and more. Others find more value in Fusion’s networking events. Sears’ day job is with the Halifax Partnership’s Connector Program, which also connects newcomers to established businesses and community leaders, so networking with her would be a good start. Sears says most people start by attending a Fusion event (publicized on their social media channels) and go from there.

Don Bureaux offers strong proof that these bridging efforts really work. He’s president of the Nova Scotia Community College, which reports almost 90 per cent of its graduates get jobs within a year (and “most in their field of choice”). Of those, 90 per cent are working in Nova Scotia. Bureaux is also the chair of the Grow and Nurture the Skilled Workforce Task Force with the Halifax Chamber of Commerce.

Colleges and universities tend to take one of two broad approaches to education, he says. One theory holds you should train students in theory and knowledge first, and then bring in the practical application when they’ve mastered the classroom component.

The other theory — the one driving NSCC — calls for practical application to begin on day one.

“What we believe is, you want to get the application of the theory and knowledge to occur as early as possible, because research suggests if you can apply the learning sooner, there’s a much stronger anchoring,” he says.

Bureaux talks about a three-legged economy standing on the private sector, post-secondary education institutions, and government. He says NSCC’s high success rate at bridging the grad-to-job gap springs from its “work-integrated learning” approach. Every NSCC student must complete a work term before graduation day.

The work term serves some of the same purposes as Fusion Halifax’s volunteer opportunities: students have already been in the workplace and have started on those soft skills. They can add to the company from day one.

“There’s that stickiness that they tend to have between the work placement employer and the job after they graduate,” he says. “The more we can do to increase work-integrated learning opportunities, the higher rate we’ll have across the board in terms of success in placing students.”

Many of these ideas are discussed at the Innovation Table set up by Premier Stephen McNeil. It brings together the presidents of Nova Scotia’s ten universities, plus Bureaux. He says the sub-table on experiential learning, which he co-chairs, helps all the post-secondary institution leaders find the best ways to connect their grads to jobs.

Some students do the traditional co-op, but NSCC always seeks new intersections that can connect students to employers. That includes internships, real-world projects companies bring students in on, applied research opportunities, and so on. They all work the same way: students make great contacts in their field, and employers get to road-test potential employees.

NSCC strives to get its students work-ready as soon as it can, so that when they graduate, they’re familiar with the current technology and practices in their field. An ideal NSCC grad starts the job hunt with strong interpersonal skills, proven self-confidence as a worker, and a good work ethic.

Bureaux says NSCC has many great partners in industry, but is always eager to connect to businesses who want to get involved. He says those that do work with NSCC see themselves as “learning partners” creating the next generation of Nova Scotia’s workforce.

The Halifax Partnership’s Game Changers strategy for retaining youth, released in March 2017, set the ambitious goal of reducing Nova Scotia’s annual out-migration of youth from 1,300 to 0, by 2019. The partnership estimates keeping those 1,300 young people here would add $1.2 billion to the provincial coffers in their lifetime in terms of after-tax income.

Game Changers sets three planks to reach that goal: encouraging employers to hire young professionals, providing experiential learning opportunities for students, and connecting young people to established local professionals.

The report found signs of progress. Over the past two decades, Nova Scotia saw 25,000 people aged 20 to 29 leave. Nearly 80 per cent of those say they want to come back and 82 per cent of recent graduates would stay if they had a job. Out-migration drops off when people get past 30, with only a net loss of 190 people each year. That means grads who quickly get jobs in Nova Scotia will likely stay for decades.

There are signs the “sticky” solution of connecting grads to jobs is paying off. By 2015-16, 500 more youth stayed in the province than in the year before.

In the report, Mayor Mike Savage says Halifax is blessed to have an annual fall influx of talented newcomers at the province’s colleges and universities. He writes that employers would be wise to hire them.

“We are investing not only in the future of our workplaces, but in the future of Halifax and Nova Scotia.”

CASE STUDIES:

Denise Watters, welder. (Matt Madden Images)

Denise Watters, Welder

Denise Watters graduated from NSCC’s two-year welding program in June, she was on the honour roll both years.

She got involved in the 14-week Women Unlimited program, connecting NSCC grads to Irving Shipyard jobs and soon landed a job. “I work every day on the panel line, welding together parts for the ships. I weld bulk heads, hammer heads, hangers, etcetera,” she says.

The “work-integrated learning” approach worked. “All two years (of study) pertained to my employment — knowing about safety, the welding machines, welding in the flat, horizontal, vertical and overhead positions,” she says.

Sue Siri, photographer. (Contributed)

Sue Siri Photographer

Sue Siri grew up in New Glasgow and moved to Halifax about 30 years ago to study journalism at the University of King’s College. In her second year, she switched to NSCC to study photography.

“I felt so at home at that school and made connections there that I still am close with to this day,” she says. “I learned all of my knowledge of photography at NSCC, which created this life-long career.”

Her latest innovation is the Iris Booth, which she describes as her photography studio shrunk to 20 square feet. Equipped with a life-size touchscreen monitor and wrap-around LED lighting and custom retouching tools, it lets recent grads take eye-catching professional portraits.

Corey LeRue, music producer. (Paul Darrow)

Corey LeRue Music Producer

Corey LeRue studied Radio and Television Arts and Recording Arts at NSCC.

“I learned all of the major skill points involving the sonics within music,” he says. “From how to record a drum kit, to the ways of getting a vocal to sit well in

a track so listeners can hear the lyrics. It set a great foundation which I then built on to advance my career.”

Today he’s a flourishing music producer, songwriter and audio engineer. He helps create, record and mix music for Hyvetown in B.C. and recently started a Nova Scotia-based record label called Dreaming Out Loud.